'Hyperphoto' inventor pictures the 'nature takeover'

The French artist claims to have invented the "hyperphoto" concept -- a hugely complex form of interactive photo montage. He meticulously photographs everything to compile ethereal scenes which recreate his travelling experiences. The results are giraffes invading Paris's Sacre-Coeur,

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Amazingly, every image in these surreal picture postcards has been captured by Rauzier himself. In an interview with Wired.co.uk, the artist explains how he fell down a rabbit hole of extreme photography following its digitisation: "When digital technology became more accessible around 2000 it was the realisation of a photographer's old dream: catch everything as closely and as widely as possible. I began to shoot three or four images, then 20, then 100, then 1000. To try and completely capture reality I started shooting not only hundreds or thousands of pictures from one point of view, but from every point possible. So, hundreds of images from one corner, then from the centre of a wall, then from different floors."

Apply this technique to every room of a house, "or castle", says Rauzier, before using them to form one seriously detailed image. "I try to put everything together in the same image," he explains, "to have as much information and complexity as I can. Complexity is important for me, it's the fundamentality of life. After that I repeat the process, and invert it to make horizontal and vertical symmetry."

That's before the animals and objects get thrown in -- and despite the ultimately interesting and bizarre collection of images, Rauzier claims only to achieve this by shooting the "useful things, like grass, stones or pavement" amongst the giraffes, electric wire and cars.

Rauzier's current project is a culmination of his earlier works into picturing "some kind of Eden, built on nature, mythology and legend -- searching for the elusive lost paraside" and mankind's "immoderation and limitless and vertiginous ambition", and places "this ideal nature into the heart of buildings and cities".

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While it's amusingly wonderful to see a sea of rhinos invading classic-inspired architecture, Rauzier makes a resonate point: "It is possible to build in harmony with nature, but most of all, even if we do end up destroying our environment, we will disappear, only to be remembered through our realisations for the centuries to come when nature will always end up having the upper hand and will surely grow upon them as it does on my photos."